Across the Zodiac eBook

Her manner was so agitated and so anxious that it
recalled to me at once the advice of Esmo upon the
same point, though the fears which had prompted so
strange an intervention were wholly incomprehensible
to me. I knew her, however, by this time too well
to refuse the trust she now for the first time claimed,
and taking the documents one by one as if I had perfectly
understood them, I wrote my name in the space left
blank for it, and allowed the official to stamp the
slips without a word. I then expressed briefly
but earnestly my thanks both to the Autocrat and to
the officials who had been the agents of his kindness.
They retired, and I looked round for Eveena; but as
soon as she saw that I was about to comply with her
request, she had quitted the room. Alone in my
own house, knowing nothing of its geography, having
no notion how to summon the brute domestics—­if,
indeed, the dwelling were furnished with those useful
creatures, without whom a Martial household would
be signally incomplete—­I could only look
for the spring that opened the principal door.
This should lead into the gallery which, as I judged,
must divide the hall and the front apartments from
those looking into the peristyle. Having found
and pressed this spring, the door opened on a gallery
longer, wider, and more elaborately ornamented than
that of the only Martial mansions into which I had
been hitherto admitted. Looking round in no little
perplexity, I observed a niche in which stood a statue
of white relieved by a scarlet background; and beside
this statue, crouching and half hidden, a slight pink
object, looking at first like a bundle of drapery,
but which in a moment sprang up, and, catching my hand,
made me aware that Eveena had been waiting for me.

“I beg you,” she said with an earnestness
I could not understand, “I beg you to come this
way,” leading me to the right, for I had turned
instinctively to the left in entering the gallery,
perhaps because my room in Esmo’s house had
lain in that direction. Reaching the end of the
gallery, she turned into one of the inner apartments;
and as the door closed behind us, I felt that she
was sinking to the ground, as if the agitation she
had manifested in the hall, controlled till her object
was accomplished, had now overpowered her. I caught
and carried her to the usual pile of cushions in the
corner. The room, according to universal custom
in Martial houses after sunset, was brilliantly lighted
by the electric lamp in the peristyle, and throwing
back her veil, I saw that she was pale to ghastliness
and almost fainting. In my ignorance of my own
house, I could call for no help, and employ no other
restoratives than fond words and caresses. Under
this treatment, nevertheless, she recovered perhaps
as quickly as under any which the faculty might have
prescribed. She was, still, however, much more
distressed than mere consciousness of the grave solecism
she had committed could explain. But I had no
other clue to her trouble, and could only hope that
in repudiating this she would explain its real cause.